Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) systems and other packet network-based multimedia systems typically utilize one or more multimedia servers to process multimedia content for distribution to viewers via a packet-switched network. These multimedia servers typically provide multiple transmission services simultaneously, such as broadcasting network television programming and multicasting pay-per-view programming while simultaneously handling packet retransmission requests for lost and corrupted packets. Conventional systems often implement a best-effort approach to try to ensure that each service is accorded sufficient resources of the multimedia server, but it often is the case that changing circumstances can leave one or more of the services without sufficient resources to meet quality constraints while other services have more than sufficient resources, thereby degrading some services without necessarily benefiting the quality of other services at the multimedia server.
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.